


Sunglasses

by Effluvium



Series: Emotional Excuses [3]
Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Peter, Hurt Peter Parker, Hurt/Comfort, Light Angst, Psychological Warfare
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-13
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-02-01 15:00:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,929
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12707313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Effluvium/pseuds/Effluvium
Summary: "It's snowing outside.""I know.""Then why do you wear them?"





	Sunglasses

**Author's Note:**

> _Emotional Excuses_ is a series, but it also works like chapters of one sole story. I'm sorry for anyone who gets confused when reading my stories, I just want you all to understand that the works _are_ interconnected and flow through each other.

“It’s snowing outside.”

“I know.”

“Then why do you wear them?”

She’d turned sixteen as of November twenty-eighth. He only knew this because Peter wouldn’t shut up about the need to throw a surprise party and to absolutely embarrass her. In reality, he was only embarrassing himself.

“I just always have.”

She scoffed, brown hair flipping around her with the abundant number of fans in the room. “It’s also nine-pee-em. Take them off, Tony Stark.”

And he did. He took them off because she hated sitting with her back to the door and hated not being able to see the emotion in the people around her, and it was so so familiar that he couldn’t deny her his brown eyes and dark circles.

“Is he alright?”

“Peter?” She frowned, looking at the window to her right. “Not always. Right now, maybe.”

“When did you find out?”

“After the parking garage.”

_PALE PALE PALE PALE_ \- “He didn’t tell you, though, did he?”

“I think, in the back of my head, I’ve known for a long while.” Her dark skin was unusually white in the yellow light, eyes orange in the flickering reflection of the bulb. “He was always running, y’know? Places to be, excuses to make. But he wasn’t really running _anywhere_.”

_LIGHTN_ \- Tony blinked, hard, throwing the memory from his head. “Have you told him? That you know?”

“Yeah. No way I couldn’t tell him.”

“What do you mean?”

“He gets hurt a lot.” Michelle glanced at him, brow raised. “But you know that.”

He did. He listened to the reports the A.I. sent every night, listened to every voicemail he left, watched every video ever recorded. His nightmares used them all to their advantage, always leaving him on edge, always plaguing his thoughts with the horrifying realities of his imagination.

“I do know. He doesn’t like talking about it, though.”

“He has days where he just… doesn’t talk.” She twiddled her fingers on her lap, looking stuck. “He doesn’t participate in class, he doesn’t say anything to anyone, he doesn’t interact, he… he just isn’t himself, y’know? And you should; you know him probably better than even Ned, maybe even me.”

Tony shrugged. “I don’t know him that well, MJ.”

“Only my friends call me MJ,” she whispered, then shook her head. “You know him, Tony. You know him a lot better than you think you do.”

_“If someone had died, that would be on you. And if you had died? Well, I feel like that would’ve been on me.”_

“I used to think that he was just a hormonal ass,” Michelle said, chuckling slightly, then frowning. “But then the… the parking garage happens, and suddenly it all clicked. I knew as soon as May died, I swear it, Tony. The way he acted when he came back? It wasn’t grief, Tony; it was guilt.”

He couldn’t help but think that there must have been some grief in there, because May was one of the only things Peter truly, legitimately cared about, thought about every day. She was what held him together, what gave him a reason to come back home, gave him a reason not to be too reckless.

He also risked his life every night for people he didn’t know, but managed to care so deeply about. So who knew?

“Does he come to you, at all? You’re more into the, uh… medical field?”

“You could say that.” She sighed. “After I found out, I told him he could come to me if anything became too serious. Problem with that is, well, he doesn’t know when ‘too serious’ is definable.”

“So he hasn’t come by?”

“Ned managed to get me on Karen’s channel - sorry about that, by the way. Wasn’t supposed to tell you about that.” She laughed, almost sincerely. “I always know his vitals, always know when he’s hurt, always know what Karen’s saying, what he’s hearing, what’s going through his head. I can even force Karen to bring him here, or the hospital, or anywhere.”

“That’s dangerous, y’know. Bringing him to the hospital.”

“I haven’t yet. Haven’t had to.” She looked Tony straight in the eyes. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t. I’ll do anything, Tony. Anything to keep him with us.”

There was something in her voice that scared Tony. Something that resonated with him, around him; something in the way she always held eye contact, kept staring and staring and blinking only to rid her eyes of grit, and there was no grit.

“Have you told Peter how you feel?”

That got her to blink. Hard. “Excuse me?”

“Have you told him? That you love him?” He felt the need to get level with her psychological weapon, beings that he had one of his own, one he thought was more refined.

“I don’t love him.”

“It’s awful brave of you to keep it from him, being that you know his entire second life.”

“Second life?”

Tony blinked, slowly, sarcastically. “Spider-Man. Also known as an alter-ego.”

“That’s no second life, Stark.” Her lips are smaller suddenly, a thin pink line getting paler and paler as she holds off breathing in. “That’s his only life. It’s consumed him, for good or evil, I don’t know. Thought you’d realized that, what with you bringing him to Berlin.”

“I brought him to Berlin to help me, not to hurt him.”

“But you did hurt him, Tony!” She stood suddenly, the yellow-lit room highlighting her cheekbones, shining off her bunned-up hair. “He was so hopeful, right? I hear everything he says to Karen, Tony - do you even realize how much you abandoned him, after that trip? You’re his idol. Fuck, you’ve saved him before. Do you even remember that? That you knew him before he was Spider-Man?”

_Stark-Expo_. “That was long ago, Michelle. I’ve saved a lot of kids.”

“Are you taking your superhero-business for granted?” Her eyes weren’t so content anymore. She was getting closer, keeping her temper under a dangerously thin sheet. “You made one kid believe in you so much it hurts him. You hired him, then fired him, then gave a fake promise. What was that offer for, again, after the Vulture? The Avengers? Do you even think of _him_ , of _Peter Parker_ , at all? Or is it all business, no play?”

_“I’ve got a million reporters outside waiting for something big to happen!”_

He’d never felt so threatened by someone so small before, not in this way. “Of course I know him, Michelle! I wouldn’t have _saved him if I didn’t know him_.”

Silence. Mistake. Big mistake.

“He holds you with the highest regard, like you’re the god he doesn’t believe in.” _Atheist_. “He would risk his life for you, Tony. He’d kill for you. He’d kill _himself_ for you. Do you know the power you hold in your hands with him in your life, no matter how distant he is?”

It was a terrifying fact, one he constantly thought about, one he knew he had to be careful with, one he knew would bring on more bloodshed than anyone would be able to stand. He himself had become more dangerous, more delicate, and he’d managed to find armor in the form of a sixteen-year-old boy from Queens with the IQ of Albert Einstein (and rising).

“I would never let him.”

“And he would never let you stop him.” She was sitting now; he didn’t know when she’d stopped standing. “He never would, Tony. That’s why he never comes to you when he’s hurt, and why he doesn’t leave you voicemails, despite having your number. You frighten him. You hurt him.”

_You frighten him._

_“What if someone had died tonight? Different story, because that’s on you.”_

_You hurt him._

_“I just wanted to be like you.”_

_You push him back._

_“And I wanted you to be better.”_

“He keeps things from you because he never thinks he’s _good enough_.” MJ laughs, but it’s painful, forced, like her lungs were too small to make the sound in the first place. “And that’s hilarious, Tony, it’s absolutely _hysterical_ because he thinks that he needs to _impress_ you to be good enough.” She glares at him. “Funny how the mind depends on such insignificant things.”

_“Trust me kid, if Cap wanted to lay you out, he would’ve.”_

“I’m not _insignificant_.”

“You’re not. And your influence on him is far from insignificant, too, but your feelings? They’re so small, they mean so little when they could mean _so much more_.” The syllables hit him like bullets, piercing through him in repetition, making him bleed and she looked so _frustrated_ and it occurred to him that she didn’t enjoy this, that she hated this.

She hated schooling him, hated this conversation, hated the way he was so oblivious to everything she was saying. Hated that she was better, more mature, more aware, because that’s not how father-figures worked in real life. That’s not how protection and reassurance were supposed to be handed out.

“He was four.” Her voice was quiet then, serene; the realizations in the twenty seconds prior seemed to fade. “Four, Tony. He didn’t know his parents. He doesn’t remember them. He doesn’t think of them, doesn’t worry about them, doesn’t let them affect him because he doesn’t know how to. Ben died, what, two years ago?”

“What’re you saying?”

“You’re the closest thing to a father that he’s got.” She grinned an ugly, malicious grin. “And isn’t that the biggest tragedy you’ve heard?”

_“He left a report again.”_

_“That’s not exactly new.”_

_“About a lady. Who gave him a churro.” Happy sighed. “Sad.”_

_A grin was slipping his face, warping it. “He’s such a dork.”_

_“You love it, too.”_

_“Love what?”_

_“That he’s a dork.” Happy rose a brow. “That he cares enough to leave reports on such insignificant things.”_

_“They aren’t insignificant to him. And he never leaves me reports.”_

_“You wouldn’t listen to them if he did.” The man blinked. “They’re long. And he rambles a lot. Why’d you give him my number again?”_

_“Of course I’d listen to them.” Tony didn’t know why he sounded so hurt._

“I never had much of a father in my life.”

“That’s no excuse, really.” She rose a brow. “Just makes it harder for you to become one yourself. But not impossible. Like, fuck… do you really think that Peter would make that bad of a dad? Down the road? Because I think he’d be a great one.”

_“Have you told him? That you love him?”_

_“I don’t love him.”_

“I care a lot more than you give me credit for, Michelle.”

She scoffed. “I’d give you credit if you actually showed that you did. You don’t even come to visit him, Tony. And he feels it, every time you delay anything with him. He feels it every time you ignore his injuries.”

“He doesn’t come to me.”

“He shouldn’t have to.”

And she was right, he shouldn’t have to. He knew everything that was wrong with him and chose _not_ to act, chose _not_ to intervene, chose _not_ to care, forever convincing himself that the wrong would fix itself, that he didn’t need to help. 

And he was so, _so_ wrong.

“Is that why you wear them?”

“What?” He hated being caught off-guard. Hated not knowing where the conversation would go next.

“Your sunglasses.” She nodded to them, almost making him go cross-eyed. “Is it to split yourself in two? Because everyone questions someone without eyes.”

_“If you actually cared, you’d be here right now.”_

And Tony had never felt so incredibly _lost_.


End file.
